This striking book is the first monograph dedicated to the work of contemporary artist David Uzochukwu (b. 1998). It features stunning images and contributions from a diverse group of writers and scholars.
 
David Uzochukwu: Bodies of Water is a poetic meditation on identity, migration and belonging. Marking the artist’s first solo museum exhibition – at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art – the book introduces readers to Uzochukwu’s visionary practice, where mythology, fantasy and personal history converge. In his photographs, hybrid beings—part human, part animal—move through surreal,
aqueous landscapes. Here, Blackness resists fixed definition: fluid, shifting and vibrantly alive.

Rejecting portrayals of African diasporic people as displaced or alien, Uzochukwu imagines figures equipped to thrive in challenging worlds—adorned with fins, scales and other transformative traits. His seamless digital collages merge precision and wonder, dissolving the boundaries between reality and imagination. The resulting images echo the adaptive strategies of diasporic communities
navigating environments often shaped by hostility and exclusion. Featuring newly commissioned essays and reflections, Bodies of Water gathers leading curators, writers and cultural critics to explore Uzochukwu’s work as a meditation on transformation, survival and the limitless possibilities of Black existence.